swollen almost together; other traces of a recent battering were not
lacking, nor was cosmetic evidence of a heroic struggle, on the part of
some valet of infinite pains, to efface them. The nose lost outline in
the discolorations of the puffed cheeks; the chin, tufted with a small
imperial, trembled beneath a sagging, gray lip. And that this bruised
and dissipated mask should suffer the final grotesque touch, it was
decorated with the moustache of a coquettish marquis, the ends waxed and
exquisitely elevated.

The figure was fat, but loose and sprawling, seemingly without the will
to hold itself together; in truth the man appeared to be almost in a
semi-stupor, and, contrasted with this powdered Silenus, even the woman
beside him gained something of human dignity. At least, she was
thoroughly alive, bold, predatory, and in spite of the gross embon-point
that threatened her, still savagely graceful. A purple veil, dotted with
gold, floated about her hat, from which green-dyed ostrich plumes
cascaded down across a cheek enamelled dead white. Her hair was
plastered in blue-black waves, parted low on the forehead; her lips were
splashed a startling carmine, the eyelids painted blue; and, from
between lashes gummed into little spikes of blacking, she favoured her
companion with a glance of carelessly simulated tenderness,--a look all
too vividly suggesting the ghastly calculations of a cook wheedling a
chicken nearer the kitchen door. But I felt no great pity for the
victim.

"Who is it?" I asked, staring at the man in the automobile and not
turning toward Ward.

"That is Mariana--'la bella Mariana la Mursiana,'" George answered; "--
one of those women who come to Paris from the tropics to form themselves